Metro-North Claims Major Progress At The 100-Day Mark

Blumenthal: 'A heightened sense of urgency and energy is needed'

At the 100-day mark after promising safer operations and better communications with its riders, Metro-North is giving itself high marks for progress.

"Our customers and everyone who relies on Metro-North have seen real accomplishments that have gone a long way toward restoring their faith in the railroad," President Joseph Giulietti declared in a prepared statement.

Political leaders in Connecticut weren't as impressed. They praised the railroad for making initial steps to restore reliability and customer confidence, but say most of the work is still ahead.

Their criticism was dialed back a little, though, perhaps because the two worst service meltdowns this spring — involving problems with a bridge in Norwalk — can't be blamed on the railroad. Instead, a long line of former governors and state lawmakers were responsible for leaving the country's busiest commuter rail line at the mercy of a rusting bridge so old that it was designed originally with a steam motor.

"I remain deeply concerned by the alarming frequency of serious service disruptions due to both aging infrastructure, and in some cases improper management and oversight," Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said Wednesday.

Blumenthal promised to keep working for more than $300 million in federal aid to help replace the 118-year-old swing bridge over the Norwalk River, which stops dozens of trains and strands thousands of riders when it jams in the open position. Connecticut owns the bridge, and has postponed major repairs or replacement for years.

Even so, that doesn't justify Metro-North's slowness in making safety improvements, Blumenthal said.

"More money must be matched by better management. There is no excuse for further delay in the adoption and implementation of further life-saving measures by Metro-North," he said. "These deficiencies have accumulated over decades, and a heightened sense of urgency and energy is needed now to correct them."

Giulietti, who was hired in February to reverse two years of bungling and management gaffes that plagued the railroad, said Metro-North has made huge strides toward becoming safer.

"Major improvements have been made in many areas, including enhancing track inspection and maintenance, installing alerters and video cameras in engineers' cabs, beefing up the safety and training departments, expanding employee testing programs to ensure understanding of safety rules, creating a computer-based track worker safety system, and implementing a confidential Close Call Reporting System," he said.

"While it's taken longer than I would have liked, I think they are taking a number of steps that will enhance the daily operations and make the railroad safer," Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said on Wednesday. "But even with these changes, the MTA has much work to do to improve their performance."

Last winter, prominent Connecticut Democrats and Republicans alike slammed Metro-North for a deadly derailment in the Bronx, a horrifying crash in Bridgeport and an operational blunder that led to a track foreman being killed near West Haven.

Failing infrastructure has been a more partisan matter, though. Republicans accuse Malloy of raiding the transportation fund to balance the budget, and point out that Connecticut is spending hundreds of millions of transportation dollars on a Hartford-to-New Britain busway.

Democrats say the failing goes back long before Malloy took office in 2011. Former Gov. John Rowland, a Republican, nearly let Metro-North's Waterbury branch shut down while quietly letting its entire fleet edge into decrepitude. It was left to his Republican successor, M. Jodi Rell, to work for hundreds of millions of dollars in bonding to start the overdue replacement, and Malloy to finish the job.